The Friday school schedule is quite a bit different from the normal Monday - Thursday school day. On Friday's we spend the first two hours of the morning as a whole school singing songs, doing exercise/dance, and having Bible story time. If I have any lesson planning or grading to catch up on, I will spend this time in my office. Otherwise I will help out with the morning activities. It's fun having all the kids together in one room and I think we all like Friday mornings. After returning to the classrooms everyone has their regular tea break/snack and then go back to their studies for the remaining hour and a half left of the school day. During this time I teach both 4 year old classes (separately). The 4 year old classes are the simplest class for me to teach, so Fridays are a very relaxed and low key days for me.
This Friday (today) I had quite a bit of grading to catch up on so I spent the morning in my office. One of my favorite students, Datu Affif (5 year old), had been absent the previous day, so I had him come into my office to go over what I had taught his class yesterday (the letter h) and have him do the activity in his workbook. He is the most adorable kid and although he knows very little English, he is a fast learner. I have discovered how easily he retains the information I teach so I am excited to see how much I can teach him in the next six months. I don't quite know how to explain this, but I often forget that we don't have a language in common. I think that Datu Affif (or Affif for short) is well aware of the fact that he is one of my favorites, but he has yet to abuse this. He usually sits quietly and pays attention in class. When I walk by his class room and stop to peer in the window he doesn't scream out "Teacher Katherine!!!" when he sees me, like most of the kids do. Often he will notice me before the other kids, and he will give me a cute smile and little wave and then will go back to paying attention to Teacher Pang. I will write more about his progress with English in the months to come.
This morning I decided to teach the 4 year olds the song, Mr. Sun. "Oh Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun, please shine down on me..." It's a great song, but not extremely necessary for us to be singing since the sun has been out all week and has been extra hot! After learning the song, the children did a sun craft. They colored a small paper plate (whatever color they wanted their sun to be... I am working hard with them to use their creativity) and then I helped them tape on sun rays, made out of strips of poster board. Above is a picture of the final product. We ended the class singing the song again with the suns they made. It was a special treat for the 4 year olds to do a craft during my class and they really seemed to enjoy it. They are simply too young to do much gluing or cutting as most crafts require. They really like coloring so usually I will just have them color a picture that pertains to the lesson I teach.
I am now having a relaxing Friday afternoon, catching up on my emails and finishing lesson plans for next week. I will leave you with a simple but important quote from "The Shack" which I just finished reading last night.
"Life takes a bit of time and a lot of relationship."
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